canada

Carbon Disclosure Project releases its Canada 2011 report today at the Toronto Stock Exchange. More Canadian companies than ever publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions. Contrary to the common belief that going green slows growth, businesses who take the lead into a low carbon economy deliver twice the financial return compared to...[read more]

There are two stories here. The first is that Canada has made many emissions pledges but repeatedly failed to enact any plan to meet those pledges. This is not a partisan issue. It happened under majority and minority Liberal governments, and it is happening under minority and now majority Conservative governments[read more]

A transition to natural gas to achieve a low-carbon energy system is not the least cost pathway.[read more]

Two of Canada’s top environmental NGOs — the Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation — issued a jointly prepared study today slamming our rising dependence on natural gas, warning that the fossil fuel, while generally cleaner than coal, could seriously slow down efforts to combat climate change if our increased reliance on it...[read more]

After 20 years of dominance, the pollution paradigm--the idea that we could solve climate change similar to the way we've addressed conventional pollution problems--irretrievably failed in 2010. At the end of 2009, the collapse in Copenhagen spelled the end of efforts to enact legally binding emissions caps at the international level. In...[read more]

Ontario’s Liberal government says we need to refurbish our province’s nuclear fleet and build another major plant near Toronto. The opposition Progressive Conservative leader, confident he will win this October’s election, says nuclear will be a cornerstone of his party’s energy policy. Indeed, as countries such as Japan, Germany...[read more]

The following Victoria Day weekend guest post is by Gideon Forman, executive director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) – along with nurses and leading health charities – is running an advertising campaign to support renewable power and the...[read more]

History was made in Canada’s federal election. Conservative gets majority government while New Democrat serves as Opposition for the first time. How will this alter federal policies on energy, environment, and climate change? Let’s examine the parties’ environmental platforms, their gains and losses, followed by how Canada’s federal...[read more]

You can win bar bets with this one, ’cause every American, almost without exception, knows that we import more oil from Saudi Arabia (or Libya) than from anywhere else.   [read more]

  The kind of good news: the majority of Canadians know about climate change and believe global warming is caused primarily by human activities. Even better, 76 per cent of those surveyed in regions dubbed “Developed Asia” have reached the same conclusion. The clearly bad news: nearly half (47 per cent) of Americans believe global...[read more]

More than a year after the Canadian government offered its crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL) for sale, some commercial interest has appeared on the scene. However, early hopes of a deal have been dashed to bits.[read more]

For a generation that’s supposed to start cleaning up its energy mix, I find it disturbing that the big money is flowing toward dirtier and dirtier sources instead. Take the case of shale gas, which is plentiful and now economical to develop in North America. Shale gas, at the point of combustion, is no cleaner or dirtier than...[read more]

I can recall when technologies like oil sands and coal gasification were commonly referred to as alternative energy, with the same high-tech aura now attached to solar power and advanced biofuels. Much has changed since then, not least our perspective on climate change and the greenhouse gases that contribute to it. It's no longer...[read more]

I’m reposting a recent entry from the blog of Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner, Gord Miller, to put Ontario’s green energy strategy – largely, its feed-in-tariff program – in perspective. Conservative pundits, anti-wind groups and other angry birds in the province like to point out how green energy is hurting hard-working...[read more]

The Globe and Mail yesterday reported that a number of key Canadian provinces have "reaffirmed their support for nuclear power" and that "the national regulator declared the country's generating stations safe even as Japan's crisis spurred other nations to back away from nuclear." The province of Ontario, the nation's most populous and...[read more]